"But doesn't he love you, Nan? He did, didn't he?"
"My dear, I think you're rather delirious. This isn't the way one talks.... You'd better ask Barry the state of his affections, since you're interested in them. I'm not, particularly."
Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or relief.
"I'm rather glad you don't care for him. I thought we might have shared him if you had, and if he'd cared for us both. But it might have been difficult."
"It might; you never know.... Well, you're welcome to my share, if you want it."
Then Gerda lay quiet, with closed eyes and wet forehead, and concentrated wholly on her right leg, which was hurting badly.
Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating.
Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with. Barry's eyes, Barry's kiss, had told her that. Gerda, the lovely, the selfish child, had taken Barry from her, to keep for always. Walked into Barry's office, into Barry's life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking, she said, that they might share him.... The little fool. The little thief. (She waved the flies away from Gerda's head.)
And even this other game, this contest of physical prowess, had ended in a hollow, mocking victory for the winner, since defeat had laid the loser more utterly in her lover's arms, more unshakably in his heart. Gerda, defeated and broken, had won everything. Won even that tribute which had been Nan's own. "You little sportsman," Barry had called her, with a break of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm for valour, he had placed in her hands. The little victor. The greedy little grabber of other people's things....
Gerda moaned at last.